Tag: Sour Cream

Made this for dinner last night, it was pretty tasty. I baked the chicken breasts instead of boiling. I used full-size breasts, rubbed with olive oil and peppered, and roasted them at 375° for about 45 minutes.

I’ve never made chili before, and in researching, I came across 50 billion recipes. So, this morning I made my own in the crock pot…

2 cans of condensed tomato soup

1 can of tomato paste

1 packet of chili mix

about ½ cup of water

1 tsp. of beef bullion

1 can light red kidney beans

however much ground meat was leftover from last night

1 tsp. cumin

1 tsp. black pepper

a dash of cayenne pepper

a dash of paprika

a dash of garlic

…and I slapped it into the crock pot on low for 8 hours.

Hope it tastes good when I get home. I’ve got shredded cheddar cheese for the top of it, & Super-Pretzels to go along with it. They always served pretzels & chili in my elementary school cafeteria so they belong together in my warped mind.

…Most of them use tomato paste, soup, sauce, juice, or diced tomatoes as a base… I even saw one that called for Spicy hot V8… and I think my mom always used soup. Tomato paste is usually bitter, so I figured the tomato soup would counteract it. All of the spices should be rockin’. I like my chili thick.

Here’s what basically went into my chili. I’ll probably eventually make a blog about it with a narrative so I can remember what I did this time for next time… to see what I wanna change or what I wanna do again.

I ended up only using the one can of diced tomatoes (the one with jalapeños) and still kind’ve overflowed the pot by a small amount. So, next time I may cut out one can of tomato soup or a can of beans. Also, I want to try garbanzo beans in my next batch… and I’ve heard chocolate powder goes good in chili some times… so I wanna try that one day too.

I also tossed in 2 slices of Velveeta ripped apart, a dash of spicy brown mustard, and a drop or 2 of A1 Cracked Peppercorn Steak Sauce.

I think the meat that I used was too fatty or I didn’t drain enough fat (…even though I got a about ⅔ of a regular sized plastic cup full of fat out of it). I had to skim some excess grease off of the top when I popped it open this morning.

Substitutions/Variations: I don’t use onions in mine… but I have bought the potatoes “southwest style” with green peppers. Also, if you don’t like cream of chicken… cream of mushroom or celery or potato or just about anything will do. I usually double the sour cream called for above, and use I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter instead of butter or oleo. Also… in place of the chips I have seen corn flakes or Ritz crackers. Once you get it down, you can adapt it any way you like.

This past Christmas when we had the family over for a holiday dinner, I decided to try & make some scalloped potatoes. I found a ton of recopies online, and took what I liked from some & what I liked from others and put them all together… leaving out the stuff I didn’t like. They turned out really well, to the compliments of everyone. The only problem is that I didn’t write down what I did… so I had no idea when I went to make them again for an Easter dinner yesterday. Last time, like everyone in the kitchen, I kept adding stuff until the sauce looked & tasted just right.

Friday night, I pulled out the same printed recipes from last time…. made sure we had most of the stuff here & popped what I needed on to the grocery list. This time I wrote down what went into it, but I may have the portions off… Where I have “cup” or “Tablespoon”, I may have just dumped some stuff in by eye.

People have asked how I made them, so I’ll try writing it out coherently here. I’ll add that my wife, Bethany, washed & cut the potatoes while I made the sauce… which was invaluable… because the sauce needed to be watched, and cut potatoes that sit for any period of time get all brown. I guess I could have cut them & put them in some cold water to halt the browning if I absolutely had to… but we get along well in the kitchen, and it’s nice to cook together sometimes. (I offered for her to do the sauce & to put me on potato duty, but she declined in case the cause didn’t turn out well, the blame could go solely on me.)

Pull it out, uncover, top with bread crumbs or crumbled up crackers, add some additional seasoning if so inclined, and pop it back in for another 15 minutes.

Well, there you have it. Pretty simple, and nothing makes me happier than cheese & potatoes. I noticed a lot of scalloped potato recipes don’t have cheese, but really… where’s the fun in that? Some also used a cream of chicken or cream of potato soup… makes it too much like White Trash ‘Taters for me. You may want to skip the breading, use chips or those crispy canned fried onions. Everyone has their own thing that they dig. Yukon Gold potatoes would make this really nice, probably wouldn’t need to cook as long…red potatoes might make it bitey… A mix may be nice. As far as the spices, I used coarse ground black pepper, I think some dry mustard, paprika, and some McKormick Season All.